Mike Arms is my hero!!

I came across this wonderful news article in today's St. Louis Post-Dispatch about Mike Arms and Iams Home 4 the Holidays. It includes two wonderful adoption stories to warm you up on a cold day (I'm a little misty eyed!). Check it out:

'Home 4 the Holidays' is a touching pet tale
By Steve Dale
TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES
11/01/2008
Funny how times change. In the late 1990s, the shelter community greatly wrote off Mike Arms, president and CEO of the Helen Woodward Animal Center in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., as either crazy or, at best, eccentric. Arms wanted to begin a campaign to adopt out pets during the holiday season. To say there was resistance is an understatement. Back then, the conventional thinking was that people who adopt around the holidays are making impulsive purchases, and more likely would return the animals for a not-so-happy New Year. "I had a hunch that was more urban myth than fact," Arms says.

Arms commissioned a study of the matter. The data demonstrated that people who adopt around the holidays are, in fact, less likely to return the pets. With the ammunition he needed, Arms enlisted the Iams pet food company for support and in 1999 he was off and running with the first Iams Home 4 the Holidays adoption drive. In all, 14 Southern California shelters participated, leading to the adoption of an impressive 2,563 animals.

That was then. This is now. During last year's campaign, which began in October and continued through Christmas, over 2,700 animal welfare organizations participated (some even outside the U.S.), adopting 491,000 pets into permanent homes. Since 1999, an astounding total of over 2 million animals have been given a second chance through Iams Home 4 the Holidays, now the largest pet adoption campaign in the world. (More)